Choose To Stand Up Analysis

President Obama and J. K. Rowling both spoke powerful, unique commencement speeches, however these speeches addressed different subjects and used personal background in different ways. President Obama’s speech is titled, Choose to Stand Up. He tells how America has always made it through hardships. The president tries to encourage the students with these words, “And we’ve made it through those moments. None of it was easy. A lot of it was messy. Sometimes there was violence. Sometimes it took years, even decades, for us to find our way through. But here’s the thing. We made it through. We made it because in each of those moments, we made a choice. Rather than turn inward and wall off America from the rest of the world, we choose to stand up

This speech was meant to give the inspiration for that generation to step up to the plate and stand up for their rights. While this speech does give inspiration, President Obama also used the speech to defend some of his politics. “This is not the first time where it looked like politicians were going crazy. One of our greatest presidents, Thomas Jefferson, was labeled an “infidel” and a “howling atheist” with “fangs.” Think about that. Even I haven’t gotten that one yet. Lincoln, FDR, they were both vilified in their own times as tyrants, power hungry, bent on destroying democracy” (Obama). The President uses this part of the speech to try and show that what is happening today is not as bad as what has already happened. While it is true that this is not the first time that politicians have been mocked or questioned, The President tries to play down and minimize what is happening today. While Obama like any other human has the freedom of speech, using the commencement speech to further his own purpose was not the appropriate way to give a commencement speech. Obama’s speech gave inspiration to the students but lacked

K. Rowling’s speech, titled The Benefits of Failure, speaks to today’s students by using a personal story. To start with, Rowling tells the story of how she fell into failure. “An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew” (Rowling). But Rowling does not stop at her failure; she goes on to say how failure impacted her life and made her a stronger person. “Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me” (Rowling). She then shows how to apply her life story to real life. Rowling tells the students that failure can be beneficial. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default. . . . You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift” (Rowling). Adversity or failure will make a person stronger. Rowling used a speech to not only tell her life story, but to also advise and impact the students as they enter the world. Both speeches